Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Watching the Wikileaks Spin

Mr Abrams is "a prominent First Amendment attorney and Constitutional law expert who represented the New York Times in the New York Times Co. v. United States (403 U.S. 713 (1971)) Supreme Court case that established the 1st Amendment rights of Ellsberg and the NYT in publishing the Pentagon Papers."

Unfortunately it appears as if he has lost a bit of his sharpness since those days, or perhaps it's the paycheck from the WSJ that has made him swallow the Red Herring Pill. Remember, this is what I am studying: the use of weaponized art [propaganda] as a means of controlling thought and debate.

Mr Abrams spends a great deal of time in this op-ed discussing the last 4 volumes of the Papers, which contained the kind of diplomatic material Wikileaks released and was withheld from the initial publication of the Pentagon Papers on sensitivity grounds. He then goes on to build a case on the Wikileaks diplomatic cables leaks and drags in the Espionage Act to vaguely hint that Julian Assange may be a scoundrel taking advantage of our magnanimous legal code.

Ok, so it's the WSJ and you do expect them to use their op-ed pages to push their political masters' agenda; it's widely-known and long-term for them. You'd also expect such a legal beagle like Mr Abrams to be current on the legal opinion that the EA can't be used against Julian Assange (which is why they are pressuring Pvt. Bradley Manning to say that he was coerced so they can use a computer crime law against Julian). What is more interesting is that this supposed authority with the credentials of the Ellsberg case behind him is so compromised/enfeebled/decayed that he can't spot the shifting of the spotlight and debate to the cables.

Please keep in mind that an inquiry HAS been made into these allegations in Sweden against Julian and the worst that they can figure they can hold him for is punishable by a $700 fine. He hasn't been charged with anything else, nor has he even been ACCUSED of anything more. Now explain why he has a $200,000 bond and Interpol involvement. Even if you don't support Wikileaks you can see that something is wrong and there is much more involved here than meets the eye.

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The original material published by Wikileaks began with the Apache Helicopter Gunsight Film published in response to the Pentagon's stonewalling of Reuters for 2+ years in their attempt to cover up the willful massacre of two Reuters journalists and a dozen civilians in 2007. The Apache Gunsight Film was only one item in the material that was later published as the Afghan War Diary, detailing the same outright lies, mis- and disinformation, manipulation and coertion that the Pentagon Papers revealed in the buildup of the Vietnam War with the Afghanistan and subsequent Iraq police actions (to this date Congress has not officially and legally declared war on Iraq).

So now we are watching the shifting of the topic and subject of the debates from "WTF is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq really?" to "he (sic) shouldn't have published those cables." Mr Abrams had the NYT, Washington Post and by extension the 1st Amendment protections on free speech behind him; Wikileaks is being bad-mouthed as "not exactly real journalism" by old-skool hacks terrified of losing their deity status and expense accounts pretending to be real journalists.

Wikileaks has not released 97% of the diplomatic cables they currently have access to, and have redacted a great deal to prevent exposure of legitimate secrets like troop movements and identities of spies. That means that (a) not all of it was leaked initially, (b) portions of it may be held back for years because they would harm legitimate US national security interests, and (c) that the purposes of the leaks were to show exactly what lies the US and other governments have been telling the public, particularly in relation to the "war on terror". Many US officials from both major parties have repeatedly stated that Wikileaks dumped all the information all at once, when in fact nothing of that sort has happened. Wikileaks released the cables to five major papers to redact for sensitive and potentially-harmful revelations.

All the personal issues, attacks, innuendos and discussion about Julian Assange is smoke being used to obscure the relevant and pertinent issues that Wikileaks revealed in the real leak, the War Diary. The moral debate about Julian's motives and methods, the titillation of the charges that have already been dismissed once, the actions and reactions from the release of the Cables, the debates about 1st Amendment... every single issue being focused on by the current major media is only a sideshow. It is the Magician's misdirecting hand motion. It is The MacGuffin. In computing or audio engineering, this is known as the signal-to-noise ratio [s/n]. It is also known as the Purloined Letter Principle. It is a way to hide or obscure information in a mass of irrelevant and distractive data. Data is not information.

- Under-reporting and misreporting deaths in Afghanistan, both civilian and military.

- Diplomats know that the Saudi Arabians are the primary donors to Al-Queda.

- The US warning Germany to keep quiet about Khalid El-Masri, kidnapped by the CIA, kept in prison for months, tortured, then dumped somewhere in Albania when they figure out he's not the one they want.

- The CIA pressured Spain into dropping investigations into the killing of José Couso [a Spanish journalist] in Iraq by American troops, dropping court investigations into the CIA's extraordinary rendition and torture at Guantanamo Bay.

- The US pushing for and manipulating support for Monsanto in Europe.

- The US pressuring Sweden to prosecute the Pirate Bay.

-Shoving USA-style IP laws onto Spain.

- The Shell Oil Company claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to every movement of politicians. Ann Pickard, then Shell's vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa boasted that the Nigerian government had "forgotten" about the extent of Shell's infiltration and was unaware of how much the company knew about its deliberations.